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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29675661">ways to say the words</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue'>softlyblue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Angst, Blood-Letting (fantasy medical care), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Poison</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:27:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,724</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29675661</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucien laughs again, and then bends, his fingers replacing his sword at Caleb's throat, "You make pretty sounds when you're hurt," he tells Caleb, like a compliment, like Caleb should be happy, "I will admit, I'll miss your little kitty-cats."</p><p>And he wraps one firm, strong hand around Caleb's throat, and hefts him into the air, his grip so tight that Caleb can't even scream anymore. He's bruising. "They'll miss them more, though," Lucien whispers in his ear, and then he opens his mouth, and Caleb can see something black and brackish, like a gas, like a poison, like cursed blood, and then Lucien is pulling Caleb towards him like a ragdoll and then Caleb can feel nothing but pain, a maelstrom of pain, and blood-hot fingers on his jaw.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beauregard Lionett &amp; Caleb Widogast, Caduceus Clay &amp; Caleb Widogast, Caleb Widogast &amp; Yasha, Fjord &amp; Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre &amp; Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto &amp; Caleb Widogast, The Mighty Nein &amp; Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>181</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>ways to say the words</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is set between the fight w/ lucien on the day of gelidon and the nein's arrival to essek's outpost. just imagine the tombtakers had caught up to them one last time, i guess? i hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>
    <em>five ways to say i love you (+ one more)</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>0.</b>
</p><p>If it hadn't been Lucien, they would be fine.</p><p>If it had been anyone but Lucien, the fight would have happened as all fights do; Beauregard and Yasha leaping into melee, Beauregard's nimble body and Yasha's raging form preventing either of them from taking too much harm. Fjord, darting in and out of melee, magic crackling from one fist and his sword swinging from the other. Veth running and hiding, ducking and weaving, firing and reloading with the expertise of repeated action, never staying in one place long enough for them to hit her, and Caduceus, dependable Caduceus, healing, hurting, beetles swarming from his white paws, energy crackling out of his staff. Caleb a safe distance away, firing, throwing, hurting, never close enough to be seen - never close enough to be caught.</p><p>But Lucien - the Tombtakers - they have fought the Nein before. They know who the heavy hitters are, and they know where the weak spots are. The skirmish caught them unawares, gathered around a fire before casting the tower that night, the goal always the damn crest, sneaking a little further towards the ultimate goal. And Caleb - And Caleb -</p><p><em>"Caleb!" </em>Veth screams, from a great distance away.</p><p>Caleb doesn't even own any weapons. He isn't strong, not physically, and although he eats better with the Nein than he has in over a decade, he doesn't make the effort to turn that new weight into something useful; he doesn't wake up like Fjord and Beauregard do, sweaty and glistening in the morning sun, and he isn't as naturally, cheerfully strong as Yasha and Jester. He scrambles away in the snow. His hands were hot with fire, and now they aren't.</p><p>When Lucien smiles, his eyes are cold. (When Molly smiled at Caleb, he was warm, he was friendly. He was a drunken hug, an arm slung around the shoulders, one last shot taken at the bar to be regretted in the morning.) "Hello, little wizard," he says softly, "I see you now."</p><p>He does. Magic is as innate to Caleb as breathing should be, but right now he can do neither, caught right in the trap of Lucien's eyes. His hands are shaking. He holds them out in front of him and casts, uselessly, and tries to throw a fireball, and fails. There isn't any magic to miss the connection to; there isn't anything at all.</p><p>Behind Lucien, Veth is running for Caleb, but she is small and the battle is spread across the snow, the Nein bedraggled, split-up, the Tombtakers experts at their job. Hunting. Worrying. Pack animals. "Caleb!" She shouts, loading her crossbow, "Caleb!"</p><p>The bolt strikes true against Lucien, straight through the armour and into the side. Lucien swears in Infernal, his teeth bared, but he doesn't rip his gaze away from Caleb as he pulls the crossbow bolt out of himself, red blood spattering the snow, melting it away by small degrees. "Caleb, Caleb," he whispers, leaning in closer, <em>"Cayleb, Cayleb! </em>Poor little wizard, lost without his hands."</p><p>When the scimitar pierces his body, Caleb is detached, and in some way very ready for it. He cries out, of course he cries out, and the pain is immense, agonising, and when his mouth opens the blood lands on Lucien's cheek, on his long neck. Lucien lifts his thumb to his own skin, rubs it off, and licks it. He does not withdraw his sword. "You spellcasters are all the bloody same," he says conversationally, as though he does not have Caleb on a spit, as though Caleb is not dripping tears and blood onto the snow before him and totally at his mercy, "You hit hard and you fold like fucking paper."</p><p>He twists his fist, just a little. Caleb screams.</p><p>Veth is not the only one who has noticed; everyone in the fight has at least one eye on Lucien, all the time, and everyone has seen Caleb stabbed. But what can they do? Even as Caleb watches, his vision blurry and wet, he sees Beau down, Yasha penned in by Zoran, Tyffial and Fjord engaged, Jester and Otis exchanging long-distance blows while Caduceus struggles towards Beau. Caleb is not first on anyone's list, right now.</p><p>He reaches forward, and the shifting of his body presses the sword further into his chest and the pain hurts, oh, <em>fuck, </em>the pain hurts. It's so bad. It's touching bone. It's touching nerves, it's sending shocks through his brain, but he reaches forward and touches Lucien's bare skin with his own and he casts -</p><p>And he casts -</p><p>Lucien laughs at him. That's the worst thing. Lucien <em>laughs, </em>as though Caleb is a faintly amusing but very stupid child, doing something that everyone should know won't be possible. "Come on," he says, "Haven't you got a knife up your sleeve? A dagger in your boot? This can't be <em>all </em>you have, is it?"</p><p>Caleb just bares his teeth at him. He can't speak. Not right now.</p><p>"It's a pity, really," Lucien withdraws his scimitar and it makes a wet, ugly noise, and bits of Caleb fly loose from the blade and hit the snow, and Caleb falls to his hands and knees with a horrible sound and a horrible pain, "I love little wizards. Point and shoot, you know? Oh, the damage you cause. The damage you <em>will </em>cause. You must be near it already." It's an insult, of course it's an insult, because with his other scimitar he tips Caleb's head back, the blade under his jaw, and then he slaps him. The barest amount of damage. His hand is slim, but firm, and he has a ring on each finger, and Caleb can feel the metal tearing into the skin of his cheek. "Go on," he says, "Insult me."</p><p>"You-" Caleb coughs, and retches. He feels weak. The scimitar did damage, critically so, but Lucien has cast something on him, too. Done something. <em>Blood hunter. </em>"You-"</p><p>Lucien laughs again, and then bends, his fingers replacing his sword at Caleb's throat, "You make pretty sounds when you're hurt," he tells Caleb, like a compliment, like Caleb should be happy, "I will admit, I'll miss your little kitty-cats."</p><p>And he wraps one firm, strong hand around Caleb's throat, and hefts him into the air, his grip so tight that Caleb can't even scream anymore. He's bruising. "They'll miss them more, though," Lucien whispers in his ear, and then he opens his mouth, and Caleb can see something black and brackish, like a gas, like a poison, like cursed blood, and then Lucien is pulling Caleb towards him like a ragdoll and then Caleb can feel nothing but pain, a maelstrom of pain, and blood-hot fingers on his jaw.</p><p>*</p><p>"Caleb," she says, "Caleb, <em>Cayleb, </em>wake up, please, please, you have to wake up-"</p><p>He is used to pain of many forms. The dull ache of a wound healed wrongly, badly, so far back in the past that to fix it now would be ridiculous. The ache of it on cold mornings. The vicious, violent pain of a fresh injury, claws ripping through skin or swords through flesh, blood pumping uselessly into the air instead of the body; the hurt of the head, the ache, the throb, the dizzying vision and the black around the sight, hands reaching for something he can't see.</p><p>He reaches up and Jester's hand is there for him to grip. She is crying.</p><p>There's the sound of screeching, trumpeting, a sound Caleb has heard only in replicated images; an oliphant, his master had called it, one of those strange beasts that lives in the acrid south. No, not an oliphant. A mammoth. "What..." he murmurs, "What..."</p><p>"We're safe," Caduceus is near him too. Two clerics around him and yet still Caleb hurts, and where is the justice in that? "We're safe for now - we took the stone, the thing, he doesn't have it - but we need the tower, Caleb. You're wounded."</p><p>Caleb tries to speak, but he finds his throat aching and seized. He squeezes Jester's hand. "Up..." he rasps, and between Jester and Caduceus he is hauled to his feet, "Wand... wand..."</p><p>By some brief miracle he is able to cast. The magic inside him must decide that he is doing enough of it on his own, without aid, to make the doorway to the tower shimmer up out of the snow, and whichever one of them was the mammoth (he can't see clear enough to tell what any of them are) has dropped their form. It is a herculean effort. Jester and Caduceus drag him through the ritual, and Caleb's hands are shaking with adrenaline and fear so hard that Caduceus has to correct his blue frozen fingers. His tears freeze on his cheeks as soon as they escape his eyes, and when his spinning vision reaches the ground he can see red spattering the snow again. They must be out of spells. "Spells-" he tries to say, and then retches, his bruised throat fighting against the effort of movement, and it's awful. All his weight is on Caduceus. Jester, he thinks, is crying.</p><p>"Just worry about the tower," Caduceus soothes, "We're far away from them. We're hidden. We're fine, we've distracted them, we're fine. Just worry about the tower."</p><p><em>Just worry about the tower. </em>Well, Caleb can do that. Jester supporting his elbow he casts, muscle memory more than knowledge helping him now, and the tower is cast. There is no noise in the snow, no laughter, no winding-down teasing from Fjord or Beau or Veth like there usually would be, but Caleb doesn't think about that. He's worrying about the tower.</p><p>He sways on his feet, what little weight he's supporting, and when he looks at his hand he sees black in his veins, "Jester..."</p><p>She catches him, and then hes out for good, but the tower has been cast and stands triumphant in the snow.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <b>1. <em>insult</em></b>
</p><p>"I'm out of fifths," Jester whispers, "You are, too. Aren't you."</p><p>Caduceus can't press a paw to his forehead because his arms are full of Caleb, but he makes a good show of trying. "Yes," he says.</p><p>When Caduceus admits defeat it's like a whimper running through the Nein, like the band snapping having thrust too much tension into it. Fjord swears, dispels his sword, and he's smiling like he does when he's panicking and he doesn't want anyone to know about it, that smile where everything is wrong and if he just looks happy enough maybe it will right itself. Yasha is wound up as taut as a bowstring, but Beau is holding her hand. Yasha is squeezing and it hurts but Beau won't say anything. She deserves it.</p><p>Veth is sitting against the wall, crying quietly so that no-one will notice her. They haven't moved out of the central room, the airy atrium, the stained glass coat.</p><p>"So one of us needs to rest, at least," Jester pushes bloody, sweaty hair out of her face. She looks tired, too. She turned Yasha into a mammoth to get them away, and everyone climbed on, and Caleb <em>screamed </em>when they jostled him but he never woke up, he just bled out into the snow, and then Beau ran ahead miles - miles and miles, hours and hours - and buried one of the two crests they have now as deep in the snow as she could manage. She relied on scouting to find the Nein again, and it almost didn't work, and the Tombtakers will be upon them soon anyway, but the crest... hopefully, they'll earn enough time. Hopefully.</p><p>Caduceus has already vanished with Caleb into the room with the magic cupboards. Beau feels weird. She feels like shit. She feels angry at Caleb, so angry she wants to hit something, but she can't move because Yasha is squeezing her hand.</p><p>"I need to-" she wrests her hand out of Yasha's grip, <em>"Fuck. </em>Fuck. Fuck off."</p><p>She watches Caleb's hair, draped down Caduceus's body, the rust-orange of it. She used to think he looked so stupid, when they'd bathed in Zadash and he'd come out towelling his head, freckles down his cheeks and across his bare shoulders, and his arms all wrapped up and the bandages sopping wet. She called him <em>carrothead, </em>the way she used to take the piss out of the kids at home, and he'd blushed and stuck his finger up at her and called her something insulting in Zemnian. "Fuck," she says, her legs wobbly, "Fuck-"</p><p>Jester and Caduceus whisk Caleb away like something to be hidden. Jester is still crying. Veth follows them, a shadow full of concern, asking <em>what about lesser restoration, have you any levels for it, what about a potion, what about you, Deucey, do you have any magic? Anything left? </em>And Beau and Yasha and Fjord are left there.</p><p>"Fuck," Beau says again, and sinks to the ground. It's cold against her knees, but she deserves that. The discomfort. "What do we do if he-"</p><p>"He's not gonna," Fjord snaps. He summons the sword again, whispers something in elvish, looks around. "Nobody's looking. Nobody's - I'm going to check them. He's gonna be fine. Jester just needs a rest and he'll be fine again."</p><p>He floats upward, saying nothing this time. He's hurt, too, but he hasn't been cured.</p><p>Beau had been unconscious, when Lucien got to Caleb. She's always the first to fall, and first to get back up again, and she is very comfortable in that black roiling space between being awake and being dead. When Jester cured her, pressed healing into her skin, Beau had leaped up and Yasha was already a mammoth trampling down on Zoran and Lucien had dropped Caleb in the snow. Discarded rags. <em>Let's fucking go! Let's go! </em>And stealing the crest from Otis again, and Veth screaming that she would kill them all, that she hated them, that Lucien would never regret something more than he would regret that, and Caleb -</p><p>Beau looks up into the tower, into the vague sunlight pouring in from nowhere. "I need a fucking drink."</p><p>"I can get you a fucking drink," Yasha lifts her by the shoulders, her hands on Beau's waist, "Come on. Don't worry."</p><p>Don't worry? Hah. Maybe if Veth had been the one saying that to her, Beau would lash out as she so desperately wants to, and she would make someone else hurt as much as she is, but this is Yasha. Yasha is a dried flower, Yasha is a crisp thing of beauty, Yasha is someone who does not need to be hurt by Beau any more than she has been already.</p><p>Beau lets herself be taken to the cosy little sitting-room. The books on the centre shelves are the same as they always are, but some of them around the edges have shifted. More Zemnian, many in Common, magical textbooks, things with Zemnian words longer than the spines, little silver dashes to separate line from line. And then: <em>Letters to Astrid (Unsent), </em>and <em>Letters to Wulf (Unsent), </em>and <em>Feedback, Dr Ikithon, Years 1-3. </em>On the shelf below them are more books, similarly-sized, titles in Zemnian, some in Sylvan. She frowns.</p><p>She knows she shouldn't. She pulls <em>Letters to Astrid (Unsent) </em>onto her lap, and opens at a random page. The whole left leaf is written in Zemnian, and most of the right as well, in Caleb's pincer-neat studying handwriting, the stuff he uses when he's copying spells into his little book. There's a paragraph, though, a paragraph in Common, which Beau can't help but read.</p><p>
  <em>...you. And Wulf of course. Last night I felt it again. The surge in my arms this time. It hurt. I was the first to get them. This is all ahead of you and I worry that you have been given more since I left his flock, and I worry that they will be more severe to you than to me. I thought of you yesterday. Your-</em>
</p><p>"Beau, I don't-"</p><p>"Yasha..."</p><p>Yasha pulls her up and away, and the book falls unheeded to the shelf, folded up already, just more of Caleb's unfolding little raw nerve of memory for his friends to prod at and investigate. "I don't think he'd like us looking," she says, still and apologetic. Her warm fingers brush Beau's jaw. "I... I'm sorry."</p><p>"What are <em>you </em>sorry for?" Beau says, because she's no good at being tender. She's no good at being nice. She wishes Caleb would <em>tell her things, </em>instead of writing letters to a woman he no longer knows. She wishes he thought of her like she thinks of him.</p><p>Yasha is no good at talking, though, which is something Beau appreciates about her. Beau talks, and talks, and talks, and talks herself into circles, but Yasha just bends down and kisses her in front of the fire, hands on her waist, like a rope tethering her to the floor. Keeping her from going anywhere. Yasha's kisses mean many things, and this one is a comfort. "I am worried about you. About him."</p><p>"Worried," Beau repeats, only standing because of the woman beside her, "Worried. Yeah, sure, I'm worried. He - he - hasn't been hurt in so <em>long, </em>Yasha, we kept him safe, and now - and this - and Lucien's thing, this weird-"</p><p>"I know-"</p><p>"And what if he-"</p><p>"He won't, Beau." Yasha holds her like she's worth something. "He won't."</p><p>And then Caleb starts screaming.</p><p>Caduceus has pulled a low wooden cot out from one of the magic cupboards and is holding Caleb into the mattress by his shoulders; Jester has flung all her weight across Caleb's ankles, and Fjord is holding his wrists, both of them in one green hand. Caleb is still screaming. He won't stop. The black veins are everywhere, all over him now, his forehead, his arms, his neck, the blue fingertip bruises running over them like ghastly tattoos.</p><p>Beau and Yasha burst into the room. "Beau," Caduceus says, sickroom mode, his hands deft and quick, "You need to hold his shoulders. I need to let some of the blood out, I need to get some of the poison out, I need to - he needs to be still. Please."</p><p>Yasha takes one of his arms, and Beau moves to the shoulders. Caleb is still unconscious because of course he is, and he isn't screaming anymore, but his breathing is heavy and hard and laboured. It takes him a tremendous effort to suck air in and release. His eyeballs flash under the lids like marbles.</p><p>Caduceus pulls a small, sharp knife from a pouch at his belt, and holds his right paw out in the air until it stops shaking. He doesn't look at any of them.</p><p>"Stay alive, you fucker," Beau hisses in Caleb's ear, although she knows he can't hear her, "Or I swear I'll put you in the ground myself."</p><p>He begins to thrash again, and again she clings on for all she's worth. His shoulders are bone-thin, birdlike, even through his winter layers and the bandages Caduceus has swaddled him in; his everything is thin. He hasn't heard her.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <b>2. <em>apology</em></b>
</p><p>The blood-letting is just as horrific as Caduceus thought it would be. He has done it before, in the Blooming Grove, when a poison ran too thick to be removed with a simple spell, or a patient had been thrashing and aching with it too long for anything other than the most gruesome way to ease their suffering. But he has never done it to a friend, and he's never done it to someone like Caleb, who stills as soon as the knife passes through his skin to the black veins below.</p><p>Veth, without a limb to cling on to, is the one holding a beaten metal bowl under Caleb's forearm, the point at which Caduceus made the first incision, and when the first spurt of black blood comes spilling out she makes a wounded noise as though it's her Caduceus has cut, and not her Caleb. She doesn't drop the bowl.</p><p>Nobody lets go of their assigned limb, either. Yasha is standing behind Beauregard with her hands in Beau's hair, and Beau's eyes are squeezed shut. Fjord is holding Caleb's other wrist, stroking his thumb across the scarred flesh, his eyes wet and his mouth open; Jester is lying all her weight on his legs, her head buried in the mattress, but everyone knows she's crying.</p><p>Caduceus presses his thumb over the wound when the bloodflow slows to a trickle, and then to a drip. He pushes as much healing as he can into it, which isn't very much at all. "Good job, everybody," he says, because somebody has to. "Well done."</p><p>Jester goes limp. "Is this going to happen all night?" She asks softly, muted. "Caduceus?"</p><p>Caduceus wants to lie to her, and he wants to tell her that was it. He doesn't. "Most likely. This poison... I don't know what it is. But it's from Lucien. He won't have made it easy for us, that's not what he wants to do. He wanted to kill Caleb, but he'll settle for making restoration very, very hard."</p><p>"But one of you needs to take a rest to get the spell slots back," Fjord says.</p><p>"Jester," Caduceus smooths his thumb over Caleb's skin once more, and then touches her shoulder. "Go to sleep, <em>please. </em>I can watch him in the night."</p><p>At last she raises her head, her cheeks wet and her face pale. She knows it makes the most sense; both of them can heal, both of them can restore, but Caduceus has cared for patients in a way Jester never did, in the past. He has sat by more than one bed through the night to fend off the spirits that whisk you to and from the world of the dead, and he's ready to do it once more. "Can I sleep here?"</p><p>"Jester... he might start screaming again," Fjord says, his eyes meeting Caducueus's. Caduceus nods, and Fjord continues, "If you sleep in your room you might hear it a little less. If you wake up through the night... if you don't get the rest..."</p><p>She bites her lip. "Yeah. Spells. Yeah. I know, I know." She bends over Caleb and kisses him on the cheek, for all the good it does, and then presses her fingertips to his lips. "Love you, Caleb, I'll be back soon!"</p><p>When she runs out of the room, Caduceus isn't the only one that smells the salt in the air. Fjord shifts uneasily, torn between the two directions, the two people that need his help; Caduceus has to flap his paw to give Fjord the permission he seems to need before he goes after her.</p><p>"I'm gonna try and sleep," Beau says in confession, her palm pressed to her eyes. She's still bruised around the wrists, cut about the knuckles, and of course she's tired; she was unconscious only a few hours ago. Caduceus could kick himself for forgetting. "I... d'you mind if it's here?"</p><p>Caduceus wants to say the same thing to her he said to Jester, but he thinks it'll bounce off. "Sure," he says instead.</p><p>He holds Caleb's hand. He smooths the fingers out one by one on his paw. They are long and thin and delicate with spellcasting.</p><p>Veth is on the other side of him, doing the same thing. She doesn't look up at Caduceus. She's humming something, the sort of tune without a tune that Caduceus remembers his mother singing to him, her paw brushing through his long hair when he was too little to brush it himself, sitting in front of the fire. Hot milk with a posy for Caduceus; hot tea with a crumbly biscuit for her. It makes him feel warm and cared-for.</p><p>He must be more tired than he thinks, if he's reminiscing about being a child again.</p><p>Beau has pulled a cot out from one of the nearby cupboards and passed out on top of the sheets in that alarming way she does, which Caduceus guesses is a monk thing. Yasha is sitting on the floor beside her, a hand on Beau's shoulders, staring at Caleb with a gaze far longer than a thousand yards. Veth is still humming. Fjord hasn't returned.</p><p>"He's very strong," Caduceus says, unnecessarily. If anyone knows <em>that, </em>it's Veth.</p><p>She shrugs, then nods. "He's the strongest person I know. Did you know that?"</p><p>"I did," Caduceus says. Caleb is very cold under his hands, and beginning to twitch again, to wrestle against whatever phantoms the poison delivers to his brain. He's mumbling, but it isn't in Common, and Caduceus has never been very good with languages. "Veth..."</p><p>She slides the bowl to Caleb's other side, along the floor so her hands don't get the change to shake. "Does this <em>help </em>him?"</p><p>The shaking is really severe now. Caleb's veins are darkening once more as the poison floods into them, coming from whatever source Lucien buried in him, and he's in danger of worsening the stab wound in his side. "I hope so," Caduceus says, and grips Caleb's body, "I really do hope so."</p><p>Caleb starts screaming only a few moments later, and thrashing as though he's drowning, and Yasha holds him and soothes him, cooing in another language again, and Veth is kissing his cheeks as though he will notice and his eyes are shut and his throat bulges against the sore skin Lucien created. He screams and screams and screams and screams.</p><p>Caduceus picks up his other arm, running his thumb down the skin to find the vein, finding bump after scarred bump, and exhausted tears of his own are pressing against the corners of his eyes. "I'm sorry, Caleb," he whispers to nobody, and makes the second incision.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <b>3. <em>action</em></b>
</p><p>The night whiles on. Yasha, sitting by Beau's side and watching her sleep, keeps an eye on the other waking members of the Nein; Veth, who is silent, running to the magic cupboards for whatever Caduceus calls for, and who in the between-times sits at the head of Caleb's sickbed running her brown fingers through his hair, and Caduceus himself, who looks exhausted and is trying very hard to hide it.</p><p>Yasha looks, because she is good at looking. (She watched, earlier. She was helpless to <em>do, </em>but she could see; Caleb, his legs kicking as he was lifted into the air, and the thing wearing her friend's body like a dress, like a coat, laughing and poisoning him with movement so like a kiss.) Now she sees Beau's face, beautiful in sleep, and up to her hair, to where Yasha's fingers are tangled in the long brown do, to where Yasha's fingers become her knuckles become her hands become her arm, to where beauty stops and <em>she </em>begins.</p><p>She feels useless, right now. She can't swing a sword at nightmares.</p><p>Caleb's screaming fits, his seizing, intense sessions of pain, have ebbed now hours into the cycle. Now he's still for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, before he begins to whimper and twitch like a kicked dog, but the physical effects are the same. The black veins. Caduceus with his small, innocent knife, nicking the skin and draining the excess into a bowl.</p><p>"He's exhausting himself," Caduceus says, when he sees Yasha still watching.</p><p>"He's asleep," she says.</p><p>Caduceus is good - he always knows what Yasha <em>means </em>to say, or wants to, even when she can't. "Exhausting himself in the bones, I should say," his pink hair is sweaty and grimy when he runs his paw through it, "He can't scream any longer. See," and he holds up his fingers to show Yasha the pinkish red stains in the fur, "His throat is bleeding."</p><p>"Oh," Yasha says. She wants to say <em>go to sleep, </em>and she wants to say <em>I'm sorry, </em>and she wants to say <em>if you rest now I'll take care of all of it. </em></p><p>But she knows she can't. Beau sleeps on, murmuring, curled up in a ball with her hands wrapped around her knees. She makes herself small when she sleeps, although Yasha would never tell her for fear she'd take it the wrong way. Her face looks very young. "Caduceus..."</p><p>"Yes?" He looks up from Caleb, his thumb on Caleb's cheek, brushing invisible dirt from him, "I think he'll be restful a little longer. The poison - works in cycles, so it seems to me. But the night is young, yet. There might me something I'm missing."</p><p>"If you," Yasha stops, clears her throat, watches her knuckles whiten around her wrists where she grips them, "If you rest... now, I'll take care of... it. I'll... wake you up. If he starts." Veth watches her, sitting by Caleb's bedside, stiller than Caduceus but no less alert. "And you, Veth," Yasha says. She thinks she and Veth have an understanding, but she doesn't know how far it stretches. Would Veth give her the care of her boy?</p><p>Caducueus shifts around, and Yasha can see him gearing up to politely say no.</p><p>"That sounds good," Veth interrupts before he can, and her little body moves around the bed to latch onto Caduceus's elbow, her fingers sinking into winter fur and holding on, "C'mon, Deucey, you need to sleep as much as any of us do." Her eyes say something different. Her eyes say <em>I'm doing this for him. </em></p><p>"Thank you," Yasha says sincerely, and as Veth pulls more blankets and bedrolls rom the magic cupboards, Yasha shifts to sit beside Caleb, away from Beau. She puts her hand on his shoulder and even this distance away she feels his heartbeat thrumming in his skin. "Thank you," she says, as Caduceus bundles himself up as efficiently as a mother settling into her nest.</p><p>Veth drags a pillow down to Caleb's feet, and curls up on top of it. She looks like a cat. Her head rests on her folded hands, but she has the poise of someone who will jerk awake at the slightest sound, and rush into usefulness again.</p><p>And then it's just Yasha and Caleb and a room full of sleeping friends she can't help.</p><p>She holds his hand, which has been folded on top of his shirt. He's been stripped down to the bare minimum; the white shirt he had been so proud to buy, one of a pre-tailored set in Rexxentrum, something clean and unsoiled. Now it's streaked with blood and black <em>substance. </em>He's in the thick wool-lined trousers he bought, and they have been largely untouched, apart from where one leg has been rolled up to let more blood out, during a more recent fit. His shirt is unbuttoned almost down the length of it, a v-shape that cuts pale skin through the white linen. His hands are pale, too, folded on top of his stomach. He eats more than he had when Yasha first met him, but not much, and there are days when he won't eat at all, looking at the food Veth hands him as though it repulses him too much to even see.</p><p>She holds his hand. She smooths her scarred thumb over his scarred knuckles. She waits for him to begin murmuring, and then crying, and then wheezing, spitting blood onto his pale lips, and then she shakes Caduceus awake as she'd promised.</p><p>She holds him down, not that it takes much. She wipes the spit from his chin. She holds the bowl for the blood steady when Veth's hands slip from the rim.</p><p>This, Yasha knows she can do. She acts. The words come slow, but everyone needs a pair of extra hands.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <b>4. <em>time</em></b>
</p><p>Fjord descends the tower in a haze of exhaustion. Jester is asleep, finally, and he had tried to lie with her, but his mind moves faster than his body and he can't stop seeing it when he shuts his eyes. Lucien, and Caleb, and the blood on the snow. Caleb isn't like Beau, with her strength, her training, her ability to bounce up and down and dodge what's thrown at her. Caleb's power is of a different sort, distant and achingly strong, fire on the end of his fingers, but he can't be expected to - he can't -</p><p>Fjord slips through the doors to the room they're keeping him in. For the last half hour there have been no screams, although when there are he just presses his hands to Jester's cheek and wills her to stay dreaming. Her eyebrows have a crease between them. He wishes he could save her in there, too.</p><p>"Fjord," Veth whispers out of the dimly-lit room, "What the fuck are you doing here?"</p><p>He scrubs a hand over his beard. "Jester's asleep. Wanted to see if I could help."</p><p>He sees, now, he probably can't. Yasha and Beau are sleeping on a low cot, Beau curled up on top of the sheets and Yasha sleeping sitting against the wall, the two of them connected with linked hands holding one another. Yasha has blood on her wrists. Caduceus is sitting by Caleb's shoulders, holding him, his hair undone and twisting around his ears in knotted tangles, every part of him screaming exhaustion, and Veth seems only to be standing because to do otherwise would be admitting defeat. Fjord stands in the doorway and looks at the last of his friends, toppling, wavering, and not fallen.</p><p>The room is quiet until Caleb breaks it with a mumble. He twists, restless, distress on his face, and Caduceus has to grab both his wrists and trap them against his chest while he moves. "It's the silence," Caduceus explains, carefully putting Caleb's hands back where they belong, "I don't know why. I think he's frightened."</p><p>"I thought he was unconscious," Fjord moves closer and kneels, his knees clicking. He places his green hand, his curved claws, on the exposed skin of Caleb's neck, watching the five points prick but not pierce.</p><p>"He's between life and death," Caduceus isn't usually prone to dramatics, so Fjord takes him at his word, and sits down. Veth sighs.</p><p>"What can I do?"</p><p>"The sound of us talking..." Veth's voice is raspy, losing itself, and she was injured in the fight earlier. and she hasn't rested earlier, "If you really want to help, talk to him. Fuck. I need a nap."</p><p>"Take an hour," Fjord puts his hand on her shoulder and pushes. She stumbles towards one of the distarced bedrolls. "Come on, I promise I won't -"</p><p>Caduceus may be self-sacrificing, but he's no idiot. As soon as the words are out of Fjord's mouth he's wrapping himself up in the bedroll by the wall, just a pink head emerging from the nest, and he's snoring. It's a reassuring sound, though. It reminds Fjord of long nights out in the middle of nowhere, the smell of his friends laying on top of each other, whispered conversations held in the dark, pleas for someone to get their elbow out of someone else's stomach. Veth doesn't snore, not anymore, but she does immediately go to sleep, right on top of Caleb's legs.</p><p>"Right," Fjord murmurs before the silence can stretch too long, "Right, Caleb. Noise. Sound. Okay... Hey, did I ever tell you about the first girl I ever thought I liked? Her name was Meg. Flamin' Meg, everyone called her, 'cause of the hair. She used to dance in the market in Port Damali of a Friday morning, and we'd get given a few hours to go down and spend our coppers if we had any. Y'know. 'Cause we would work in the port, around and about, and I used to sweep floors for this old lady. What was her name? Fuck," he presses his hand to his forehead. His voice feels stupid - <em>he </em>feels stupid - tucked into this room with nobody to really hear him. Why is he talking about Meg? He hasn't thought of her in years.</p><p>Caleb's hair is almost as red as hers had been. He can see her, dancing in the corner of his mind, her hands flung out, her green skirts whirling, the bells on her ankles tinkling to the beat only she could hear.</p><p>"Flamin' Meg, anyway," Fjord says hurriedly as Caleb shifts on the bed, "She used to pull us from the orphanage into the dance if she thought she wasn't getting the coin she should've. I think it's 'cause she knew the people in the market would give her coins more often for dancing with the poor kids. Everyone knew we were poor. We had... y'know, darned clothes. Socks that didn't match. Bruises, sometimes. Not from the carers or anything, never them, but if you pack thirty boys into a house in Port Damali and tell them all to grow up together they'll get a little... y'know. Feisty."</p><p>He talks until his throat is sore and raspy, and then he talks some more. Caleb twists and turns, and twice, Caduceus has to be roused to stop him from spasming, to stop the poison digging deeper than it already has. Fjord cries, quite a bit.</p><p>And then it's been eight hours and he hasn't stopped talking. He can't.</p><p>Jester comes into the room like the sun after the storm, and he finally knows that everything will be okay in the end.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <b>5. <em>gift</em></b>
</p><p>Jester wakes up with the feeling that always comes to her after a night of sleep, good or not. She had discussed it with the Traveller once, when she was younger and he hadn't given her any powers yet; why couldn't she be magic all the time, without the need to sleep?</p><p><em>You're only mortal. </em>She all but falls out of bed, so excited is she to be awake, and she can't think about what might have happened during the night. Everything will be as it was when she woke. It has to be. A world without Caleb is a strange one, one she doesn't think she can imagine with any realism; Caleb is central to her universe in the same way they all are, planets orbiting the sun of their family. But then. But then, she thought that of Mollymauk, once upon a time. </p><p>(No. No she didn't. She can't let Caleb die just because she doesn't trust herself - she won't let her own shit get in the way of his life. His life, yes, because he deserves to live. To laugh as they bury each other in snow. To love, his eyes shut, his hair long and beautiful, as they sway on the dance floor, both of them singing. He deserves to be happy and she won't - she can't - she can't do that to him.)</p><p>"Caleb," she says, in the doorway. "Caleb-"</p><p>Her friends are around him. Caduceus looks wrecked, destroyed; Veth is no better, her eyes deep set in her head and bruising on her cheek where she was flung, earlier in the battle. <em>Yesterday.</em> Brimming with magic Jester doesn't even think before she casts, pressing a healing spell into Veth as she pats her head, en route to fling herself by Caleb's bedside. Beau and Yasha are awake, standing a little bit further away, and Fjord is half-asleep leaning on Beau, his mouth open and his beard even messier than it usually is.</p><p>"Can you do it?"</p><p>Jester has to look around to check who asked her. She feels frightened - no, not frightened. Anticipatory. "I can do it," she says, and sinks down in front of Caleb, a handful of diamond dust in her fist. Against the pallor of his pale, waxy skin, the diamond dust looks almost too brilliant to consider. </p><p>Caleb has always been kind to her.</p><p>He's weak, sure - or not the strongest - but when she's slipped in the snow, his hand has been on her elbow, and his smile has been bright and genuine. When she's said things she wishes she could retract, sometimes the only one that doesn't look at her any differently is Caleb, who never could. She listens to him. She danced with him. She held his hands in hers, and felt the bones against her skin, and when she saw him laugh for the first time she thought that maybe there would be hope for them all. He loves her, she knows that, but he's never made it anyone's problem but his own. Caleb has always loved her, and she has always loved him. He is kind to her. He listens to her. When she says things, when she knows she's wrong, when she knows she's been childish and foolish and stupid, he brushes her hair behind her ear and says <em>okay, okay. </em>And he doesn't hate her for what she's done wrong and he doesn't think she's silly for trusting Artagan even though she knows she <em>was, </em>and he doesn't ever, ever, ever judge her. </p><p>He looks on the verge of death right now. His face is pallid and wet, and his lips have cracked and dried. His hair has been brushed, finger-brushed, but it lies unwashed, covered in dirt and grime and blood. He looks very small when he's not awake. Not small. Not small. But beside Caduceus and Yasha he looks diminished, and thin with exhaustion and lack of proper food and drink, and pale with lack of any real sun. "What if this doesn't work?" Jester asks. She looks up at Caduceus. "What if-"</p><p>Caduceus presses his lips together. He looks pained. He shakes his head.</p><p>"Just do it, Jes," Beau says quietly, "We'll... get through it if it doesn't."</p><p>Jester inhales.</p><p>Jester breathes.</p><p>Jester thinks about how lost she'd be without him, and she casts Greater Restoration, and the diamond dust in her palm shakes and floods into Caleb's chest, and still he breathes and his eyes flicker -</p><p>And then, without a breath in the place -</p><p>Caleb sits up and vomits black, poisonous sludge all over the floor. "Fuck," he says indistinctly, and falls off the cot, and retches again.</p><p>And - "You're alive," Jester breathes, and the next few seconds are a mess of shouting and grabbing and limbs as everyone tries to do their bit for him, as everyone tries to help, as everyone tries to tell him how worried they were. "You're alive," she says into his ear, and kisses his sweaty cheek, "You're alive!"</p><p>*</p><p>
  <b>+ 1. <em>i love you </em></b>
</p><p>They tell Essek everything. The chase, the hunt, the fights, the running, the <em>power </em>Lucien has. When Veth shuts her eyes she still sees it, burnt into her mind forever; the purple hand squeezing, Caleb choking around a spell that he can't call into being. His throat is still faintly bruised, and they look like fingertips.</p><p>Essek doesn't look at any of them for very long, but Veth makes a point of noticing how little he looks at Caleb. His skin is as pale as drow biology will allow, and when he presses his palm to his cheeks his hands tremble. "And... and you are all okay? You are all-?"</p><p>"Caleb almost died," Jester says cheerily, "But we're fine now!"</p><p>"Caleb almost died," Essek repeats. He looks like he wants to be sick. He looks at the bruises around Caleb's neck; Caleb must see him looking, and he shifts a little as though he can hide behind Veth, when every bit of him <em>screams </em>injury. His brittle smile. His limp, still healing, his tremor-thin fingers and wrists, the dark shadows under his eyes like thumbs. Veth almost can't tell which of the wizards look worse for wear right now; Essek, eaten up by his own misery, and Caleb, by everyone else's. "Of course he did."</p><p>"That hardly is relevant right now," Caleb snaps. Caleb doesn't like it. Caleb doesn't like everyone jabbing at open wounds; he has to take the first strike at himself, at his weaknesses, before the Nein are allowed free rein.</p><p>Veth takes his hand. She's been doing that a lot, recently, like she needs to remind herself that his heart still beats.</p><p>"No," Essek sits on his desk. He swings his feet. Veth may hate the guy for what he's done, but isn't it enough to punish yourself, over and over and over? To exile yourself to the ice, to lie awake without a dagger in your hand because even if you see the end coming, you know you deserve it? To fling yourself at the unimaginable time and time again, just to see if it will hurt? "What can I do for all of you?"</p><p>*</p><p>Caleb stays behind, after Essek's dismissal. Veth knew he would. He sees himself in Essek; broken goods. The rest of the Nein wander down the corridor loudly bickering over where they should go first for aid across the world, which of their allies would give them help, but Veth stays lingering by the door, her hands behind her back, thinking about the man she loves.</p><p>(What is Caleb to you? A lover? No, no, how could you say such a thing? A son? But sons don't protect you in return, sons don't crouch over your broken body to kill on your behalf. A father, then? Of course not. Caleb looks at her with trust, with hope, and he admits it - he admits it - he is dependent on her, he needs her, he loves her. A brother? No. She loves him too deeply, holds him too close.)</p><p>She can hear the two of them whispering. Essek, his voice low and neat, and Caleb, his voice full of rasping pebbles. The same coin, reflected.</p><p>And then he emerges. Essek does not follow him, and Caleb seems surprised to see Veth. "What-?"</p><p>"Just waiting on you," Veth says, falling into step. She reaches up and takes his hand, just to hold it. His heart beats. His blood runs clear and red. "Is Essek okay?"</p><p>Caleb frowns. He looks distant, but not mad. "Essek is... eating himself alive, I believe. But he will come with us. He will come with us."</p><p>Veth squeezes his hand. "I love you, you know."</p><p>He looks down at her, and his face is surprised, amused, but not shocked. "I know," he says, like that statement in itself is not a miracle, "I love you, too."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>my tumblr is softlyblues if u wanna come talk to me abt how caleb needs to express his anger at trent before smth really bad happens</p></blockquote></div></div>
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